n00b Needs Help

Duck Man · Posted: Fri Jan 28, 2005 8:24 pm Post subject: n00b Needs Help

Ok so I have been interested in Linux and Unix for a while now but am just now really diving into it. I have an extra computer that I installed Mandrake on yesterday. Its pissing me off. I want Gentoo. Always wanted Gentoo. The problem is that this computer can't boot from cd. So is there a Gentoo boot floppy that has been made since the last time I checked? If not can some one please help me. Its a real downer sitting here with Mandrake being stupid on me. Thx.

yaneurabeya · Veteran Joined: 13 May 2004 Posts: 1754 Location: Seattle

Did you boot Mandrake from a LiveCD before?

Duck Man · Posted: Fri Jan 28, 2005 8:46 pm Post subject:

Not on that computer. I have a Mandrake boot floppy. From there it finds the dc and installs normaly.

SuperYak · Posted: Fri Jan 28, 2005 9:36 pm Post subject:

If your computer has a cdrom drive, you should be able to go into your bios settings, by hitting delete, or F1, or something else and changing your boot order..

pharaoh · Posted: Fri Jan 28, 2005 9:53 pm Post subject:

If it's an older computer it may not be able to boot to the cdrom. Or maybe the bios needs a flashing?
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AllTom · Posted: Fri Jan 28, 2005 10:44 pm Post subject:

SuperYak · Posted: Fri Jan 28, 2005 10:46 pm Post subject:

Duck Man · Posted: Fri Jan 28, 2005 10:55 pm Post subject:

Ok so a little background on the computer and on me. I am just a n00b with Linux and Unix. I almost installed Gentoo once from stage 1. I got a few errors here and there and just gave up because I wasn't going to keep it that way any way. I got the computer from my freind for free. Its an older IBM Aptiva. The bios has a setting for the cdrom boot and is set right. It just doesn't do it... Never has and I can't find a newer version of bios. Its slow and doesnt have much RAM but it can run stuff, just really slow. Like I said, Mandrake is on it right now and runs, just not the way i want it to. I need more control, there fore Gentoo. I have been following Gentoo for a while now. Almost 2 years. Just never got the guts to try using it all the way. I was looking into other distros but they are eather too 'user freindly' (like Mandrake) or to corprate. I like to describe Gentoo as 'raw.' But I am a n00b... :-P

Duck Man · Posted: Sat Jan 29, 2005 2:31 am Post subject:

I got a tomsrtbt disk working. Is it really that hard to install Gentoo with?

yaneurabeya · Veteran Joined: 13 May 2004 Posts: 1754 Location: Seattle

I'm not really hip on recommending other distros, but maybe Slackware would work in your case. Compiling does require a lot of computing resources-both in terms of RAM and CPU usage, so since slackware is a minimal OS it would work more to your advantage. Look up slapt-get if you decide to follow this path.

There are boot floppies for the distro and they are easy to use.

AllTom · Posted: Sat Jan 29, 2005 4:33 am Post subject:

Duck Man · Posted: Sat Jan 29, 2005 5:48 am Post subject:

I see. I did boot up with it and did notice EVERYTHING I know to be missing... I will try slackware. I have heard good things. They really should make a Gentoo floppy tho... Any one knoe why they havn't?

yaneurabeya · Veteran Joined: 13 May 2004 Posts: 1754 Location: Seattle

Not sure why they haven't done a boot floppy, but it's most likely because there are so many required programs on LiveCD that you'd have to have tons of floppies on standby for installing.

AllTom · Posted: Sun Jan 30, 2005 3:48 pm Post subject:

yaneurabeya · Veteran Joined: 13 May 2004 Posts: 1754 Location: Seattle

That makes sense.